Month: November 2006

It’s not unusual for folks to tell us how muchÂ they love using Surfulater, but we don’t get much feedback about the Surfulater web site. So I was very pleasantly surprised when I received the following e-mail from DeborahÂ Merritt who has recently discovered and purchasedÂ Surfulater.

Neville,

I’ve been playing with this for just a short time, but I love the program.Â I have no experience at all with programs like this.Â But for a long time I have wanted some sort of program to organize my research.Â I’m a professor and started out in the days when we used notecards!Â Just out of curiosity, I put “research software” into google and started looking at a few of the programs that turned up.Â I hadn’t even thought about a program that primarily organized material from the web.Â But as I thought about it, I realized that most of my research now–even from scholarly journals–is online.Â So I kept browsing.Â I liked your site because (1) it referred to full text searching, and (2) there were “fun” features and it didn’t seem to take itself too seriously.Â I decided to give the free download a try.

After just an hour or so, I was hooked.Â I happily purchased the software and have been continuing to enjoy it.Â Thanks so much for developing this.Â I’m starting slow, with the basic features, but I’m sure that soon I’ll be checking the blog and forums for more advanced ideas.Â Cheers!Â Debby

Deborah J Merritt
John Deaver Drinko/Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law
Moritz College of Law
The Ohio State UniversityÂ

When we designed the Surfulater web site I wanted to make sure it looked good and got our message across as quickly and simply as possible. Often you visit a Web site and leave without having any idea what the site was about. I’ve read statistics that indicate you have about 5 seconds to grab someone’s attention, before they’ll give up and move on. When your business relies on sales from yourÂ Web site, you really do want folks toÂ stay somewhat longer than those 5 small seconds. I’ve written here before about having to pander to search engines, instead of writing for your readers, which is really infuriating. Getting the balance right is the hard part, a bit like writing software.

So it was great to get Deborah’s e-mail and as I told her at the time it made my day, which hadn’t been a particularly good one! We’ve had a few more exchanges since and I’m pleased to say Deborah is one very, veryÂ happy Surfulater user. This is an excerpt from an e-mail I received from Debby yesterday

I’m probably starting to sound like a broken record, but this really was a tremendous help in gathering info.Â I read lots of medical journals online, in addition to more popular websites, and it used to drive me crazy keeping all of this stuff straight.Â So thanks again for everything!Â Debby

In closingÂ I want toÂ let you knowÂ how we can help folks by providingÂ Surfulater discounts. If you run a Forum, a Blog, a Web site, a User Group, a Newsletter etc. we can provide your readers or members withÂ a discount. Of course thisÂ helps us by getting more people to find out about Surfulater and it helps you with special offers you can provide to your readers.Â It wasÂ opportune to mention this here as Debby moderates a forum and I’ve provided her members with a discount. So let’s help each other. Just drop me an email and we’ll get startedÂ – see the Surfulater Contact page for myÂ e-mail address.